Cruising to a first

Casting off from Honduras

Okay folks, are you sitting down?

Poor John and I finish our first-ever cruise tomorrow morning in Florida. Later in the day we fly to Cancun, Mexico for two nights. But wait, there’s more.

I know, it’s hard to keep track of us.

We were in Alaska for a couple of weeks. Then we had two nights with my cousin, Jo, in Seattle. From there we flew to Tampa to join a seven-night cruise that would warm us up and keep us busy until we headed to Cancun, on our way to Cuba.

Whew!

I’ll get around to all those flittings soon (assuming I can get wifi in Cuba). I still have lots more to tell about Alaska and Seattle, but for now I’ll interrupt programming with an introduction to cruising.

Song and dance routine

My mother’s first cruise
My mother took her first of many cruises with her mother a couple of years after my dad died. I’ve always loved mom’s story about the Greek guy she met during a stopover on a Mediterranean cruise.

He took a real shine to mom and urged her to join him on his yacht. Mom declined graciously, saying she couldn’t possibly abandon her own mother. Back on ship later that afternoon, mom and grandma saw the guy sail by on his seriously huge yacht. He waved furiously at mom and she waved back.

Mom then told grandma about the invitation to cruise with him. My grandmother—and I have to say I had no idea she had such a sense of humour—said ‘Shall I push you overboard now?’

But I digress.

Our first cruise
We’ve been wary of cruises. Seriously we aren’t the cruising type. I know we went to the Antarctic by ship, but that was an expedition, not a cruise. All of us were bundled up in parkas, boots, scarves and mittens. There was one dining room, no 24-hour service, no formal night and plenty of exercise walking on the snow.

This has been totally different.

For starters, I felt the need to pack a dress and two skirts. The last time I packed a dress was to go to a nephew’s wedding in the USA. The good thing about that is that I brought the same dress on this trip.

We’ve had two ‘formal’ nights on this trip, so I’ve worn the dress and one of the skirts. I wear a dress about twice a year, and now I’ve worn dressy clothes twice in a week!

Song from ‘Chicago’—one of the top performances

But it gets weirder. Poor John has worn a dressy shirt twice in a week, although he drew the line at a tie and he did not get kicked out of the dining room.

He was reluctant on other fronts too. He did not enter the men’s belly-flop competition, the sexiest-man competition, the battle of the sexes, the scavenger hunt, the want-to-feel-like-a-millionaire competition or the 1970s dance-a-thon.

I have been just as bad. I didn’t buy a massage, a $19.95 watch, a cheap tanzanite, two t-shirts for $20 or diamonds discounted by 20 per cent.

We have, however, turned up to quite a few of the trivia quizzes and won one. Poor John really does bring his genius and memory to these events, and our fellow quiz mates have been delighted to have him on their team.

Pity we weren’t at the one quiz that asked ‘what is the capital of Australia?’. We are from Canberra, but for that quiz, no one knew the answer.

We’ve had daytime stops at four ports—one each in Honduras and Belize and two in Mexico. You can’t see much in a day, but the ports have been fairly small and I’ll write more about the highlights.

When you disembark, the main sights are acres and acres of duty-free shops, so we’ve bypassed them and headed straight to town on foot. The first stop was so rainy that it took two full days for my shoes to dry out. Luckily we had umbrellas to cover most of the rest of us.

But that’s enough intro for now. I need to get this posted and then get to bed. It’s after midnight and they are kicking us off the ship in the morning.

And in case you’re wondering, internet on ship is not cheap at $20 a day for an often slow and intermittent service. But, hey, it has kept me in touch with you!

More soon, I hope!

Another song